State Chamber Receives Grant for Bioinformatics Center

State Chamber Receives Grant for Bioinformatics Center

Article excerpt

The State Chamber has received a $47,000 federal grant to develop
a National Bioinformatics Collaboration Center in Oklahoma, which
could create 40,000 new jobs.

Bioinformatics, one of the fastest-growing fields in the
biological sciences, accelerates the research and development
process by identifying patterns in research data. According to
Business Week magazine, bioinformatics is projected to grow into a
$43 billion industry by 2004.

However, the development of the industry is hampered by the
inability of research centers, working with separate, incompatible
databases, to freely exchange information.

Bioinformatics offers the opportunity to create sustainable, high-
salaried jobs and wealth not seen since the days of the oil boom,
said Rudy Alvarado, chairman of The State Chamber's board of
directors.

The ability of scientists to intelligently convert research
information into valuable knowledge has not kept pace with the
exponential growth of biotechnology data, reads a report from The
State Chamber. Biotechnology researchers are drowning in a logjam of
data. To break the logjam, easy collaboration between scientists
must occur.

The proposed center would allow scientists in Oklahoma and other
states to share biotechnology research data. The Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention in Atlanta awarded the grant to The State
Chamber to develop a model for how the center would work.

The primary focus will be to develop 'digital collaboration
software' to accelerate medical and agricultural research, according
to The State Chamber's grant proposal. The clients of the
Collaboration Center will be a consortium of publicly funded
research centers, universities, government agencies and
participating commercial firms.

Consortium members of the National Institute of Health,
University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University, Oklahoma Medical
Research Foundation, the Noble Foundation Inc. …